Turbofolk Reconsidered

Alexander Praetz und Matthias Thaden – Turbofolk reconsidered Matthias Thaden und Alexander Praetz Turbofolk reconsidered Some thoughts on migration and the appropriation of music in early 1990s Berlin Abstract This paper’s aim is to shed a light on the emergence, meanings and contexts of early 1990s turbofolk. While this music-style has been exhaustively investigated with regard to Yugoslavia and Serbia, its appropriation by Yugoslav labour migrants has hitherto been no subject of particular interest. Departing from this research gap this paper focuses on “Ex-Yugoslav” evening entertainment and music venues in Berlin and the role turbofolk possessed. We hope to contribute to the ongoing research on this music relying on insights we gained from our fieldwork and the interviews conducted in early and mid-2013. After criticizing some suggestions that have been made regarding the construction of group belongings by applying a dichotomous logic with turbofolk representing the supposedly “inferior”, this approach could serve to investigate the interplay between music and the making of everyday social boundaries. Drawing on the gathered interview material we, beyond merely confirming ethnic and national segmentations, suggest the emergence of new actors and the increase of private initiatives and regional solidarity to be of major importance for negotiating belongings. In that regard, turbofolk events – far from being an unambiguous signifier of group loyalty – were indeed capable to serve as a context that bridged both national as well as social cleavages. Introduction The cultural life of migrants from the former Yugoslavia is a subject area that so far has remained to be widely under-researched. Trying to make a first attempt to contribute to filling this gap, this paper aims to trace the connections between musical and entertainment events taking place in Berlin from the early to the mid-1990s and the (re-)definitions of Yugoslav migrant communities. In this respect, our main goal is to expand approaches that have dealt with Yugoslav citizens outside Yugoslavia by considering them first of all as being subject to propaganda from the “homeland”1 or as the ones accounting for 2 . radicalization due to long-distance-nationalism. Contrary to the treatment of cultural events in 125 Berlin and their meanings as mere reflections of developments within Yugoslavia, we argue – 2 Turbofolk reconsidered. Some thoughts on migration and the appropriation of in 1990s music early migration and thoughts the appropriation on Some Turbofolk reconsidered. 9 that the late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a shift in representations of belonging that was also mediated and negotiated through cultural production taking place locally. Attempting to provide insights into processes of belonging we aim to present a more multifaceted picture of former Yugoslav music production that does not preclude the migrant’s 1 osteuropäische Hefte 3 Hefte (1), S. osteuropäische Cf. Novinšćak, Karolina (2008): From „Yugoslav Gastarbeiter“ to „Diaspora-Croats“. Policies and Attitudes toward Emigration in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Croatia. In: Caruso, Clelia; Raphael, Lutz (eds.): Postwar Mediterranean Migration to Western Europe. Legal and Political In: Süd Frameworks, Sociability and Memory Cultures. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, pp. 125–143. 2 One of the most lucid examples of this kind has certainly been the journalistic account given by Hockenos. Cf. Hockenos, Paul (2003): Homeland Calling. Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars. Ithaca: Cornell University Praetz, Alexander; Thaden, Matthias (2014): Praetz, (2014): Matthias Thaden, Alexander; Berlin. Press. 92 Alexander Praetz und Matthias Thaden – Turbofolk reconsidered experiences. By rather taking them as a point of departure we hope to contribute to recent efforts in overcoming a national and cultural “container-thinking”.3 Although the body of scholarship on cultural life of Yugoslav Gastarbeiter in the Federal Republic of Germany as well as on the involved identity politics has remained somewhat thin, we could base our research4 mostly on insights that have been recently put forward by Vladimir Ivanović and Nikola Baković.5 Both of whom dealt with efforts on behalf of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia to provide means of “guest worker” information. We will additionally give a brief presentation of Yugoslav migration to Germany and the cultural landscape it generated in West Berlin. The paper’s principal share, however, will be devoted to the shifts that we expect to have occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Based on the overall issue of this project it will furthermore be discussed whether and how institutions and actors organizing cultural life were affected by the escalating political situation in Yugoslavia and whether and how group belonging was negotiated by music consumption and its staging. In this respect, our particular aim is to scrutinize how the emerging turbofolk-music from Yugoslavia was appropriated in Berlin and whether it was charged with particular meanings.6 For this purpose we conducted several narrative interviews with people born in Yugoslavia living in Berlin at that time. Throughout these interviews we mostly tried to get a hold on the various intersections between music and belonging by primarily probing into subject areas we assumed to be of importance. Concurrently this paper aims to combine our previous research interests.7 In the following, we shall try to bring together our findings by presenting aspects of the impact and the appropriation of turbofolk-music in Berlin. 3 For a critique from a global historians’ perspective, see: Conrad, Sebastian; Eckert, Andreas (2007): Globalgeschichte, Globalisierung, multiple Modernen. Zur Geschichtsschreibung der modernen Welt. In: Conrad, Sebastian; Eckert, Andreas; Freitag, Ulrike (eds.): Globalgeschichte. Theorien, Ansätze, Themen. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, pp. 7–49; pp. 35–37. 4 A significant confinement is to be made here with regard to our language-skills: We were both studying the Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian language for some six months only. This is why literature from the former Yugoslavia has, for the most part, not been sufficiently incorporated. 5 Ivanović, Vladimir (2012): Geburtstag pišeš normalno. Jugoslovenski gastarbajteri u SR Nemačkoj i Austriji, 1965-1973. Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju; Baković, Nikola (2012): Socialist “Oasis” in a Capitalist “Desert”. Yugoslav State Propaganda for Economic Emigrants in FR Germany (1966–1975): M.A.-Diss. Budapest: CEU; available online at http: //etd.ceu.hu/2012/Baković_nikola.pdf, accessed July 8, 2013. 6 We are indebted to Archer who recently called for researching turbofolk and its impact on communities outside Yugoslavia. Cf. Archer, Rory (2012): Assessing Turbofolk Controversies. Popular Music between the Nation and the Balkans. In: Southeastern Europe 36, pp. 178–207, here: p. 200. 7 Alexander Praetz has been concerned with the emergence of “turbofolk” in former Yugoslavia, thereby tackling a rather simple minded notion of this music as being a mere feature of a Serbian nationalist political landscape. Instead, he focused on contested meanings and the discourse that accompanied this particular genre both within as well as beyond Serbia. Matthias Thaden, for his part, was preoccupied with identity politics of the Croatian Catholic Mission in Berlin. He demonstrated that the definition of what it actually meant to be “Croatian” was neither static nor shared, but subject to articulation struggles that involved numerous actors; see Thaden in this issue. Most essays published in the thematic part of this issue of Südosteuropäische Hefte were part of the research project “Repräsentationen des sozialistischen Jugoslawien im Umbruch [Changing Representations of Socialist Yugoslavia]”. 93 Alexander Praetz und Matthias Thaden – Turbofolk reconsidered Turbofolk and its scientific assessments Research within humanities on the Yugoslav disintegration process of the early 1990s have dealt with the social processes of change within the (post-)Yugoslav states regarding the social, economic, political as well as the popular-cultural area. In this latter area it was mainly preoccupied with the question about the significance of cultural phenomena for the establishment of nationalism. In doing so, the advent of the so-called turbofolk played a quite decisive role, which as a musical genre originated in the early 1990s and is perceived to have dominated the field of popular-culture in the following period. What is special about the music of turbofolk is its hybrid content mixing various genres like folk, house, dance and hip hop as well as often mentioned elements of “oriental music”. The music is usually performed by a singer and as an additional means of turbofolk, the accordion is usually supposed to play a central role.8 Starting from Eric D. Gordy’s fieldwork in Belgrade during the second half of the 1990s turbofolk has been described as a musical phenomenon, which has promoted Serbian nationalism at a cultural level. Gordy argued that turbofolk was deliberately promoted as part of the destruction of alternative structures in the field of politics, culture and society by the new Serbian state elite and ascended through this support as the cultural mainstream.9 Gordy especially described the connection between turbofolk and Serbian nationalism with respect to the interdependence between new actors

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